Rifles and Pistols and Guns, Oh My!

I do some work for the Weatherby Company, makers of some of the finest rifles in the world, including the renowned and vault-like Mark V, and I went to my local range yesterday to play with their new ladies’ model, called the Camilla.

It’s a private, unsupervised range, and the only other person there was an older gentleman shooting a few tables away. When I turned to signal for down time to check my target, I noticed he was shooting a Weatherby and that his truck had a “Semper Fi” sticker on it with the cursive Weatherby W decal right above that. I had never met this gentleman before, he had no idea who I was (we didn’t even exchange names until later), and I said nothing to him about my having any connection to Weatherby. This, paraphrased and condensed, is what came out, unsolicited, in our conversation:

His name is Jim Neal and he is an eighty-year-old former Marine, originally from Montana. He and his family (children and grandchildren) drive up to Dillon, Montana ever year for a couple of weeks of deer and elk hunting. His rifle is a synthetic-stocked Mark V .340 Wby that he bought secondhand thirty-two years ago as his all-purpose hunting rifle. He had Weatherby install a muzzle brake a few years back when age began to make the recoil a little unpleasant. He had a Kahles scope on it originally, but earlier this year, when he started to practice for his family hunt, the focus ring froze up. He sent the scope back to Kahles, but they told him it would be months before they could repair and return it. He mounted another scope and found, to his horror, that his shots were going all over the paper. He asked a friend to shoot it as a double-check. Same thing. Another scope. Same thing. He called Weatherby and then drove the rifle across the state to them in Paso Robles. He dealt with a lady named Cheryl in the Service Department who took him in back to talk to a gunsmith named Vladimir, who examined the rifle.

How it happened, or how he had been able to shoot the rifle, I don’t know, but this is what they found:

The stock was cracked, the magazine was bent, the floorplate hinge was cracked, and the safety wouldn’t engage properly. Weatherby put on a new stock, repaired the magazine and the floorplate, fixed the safety, and installed a new trigger, but the new trigger had too much creep in it, so they replaced their replacement. Then Cheryl and Vladimir gave Mr. Neal a Weatherby cap, a butt-stock ammo carrier, a sling, and Vladimir gave him his own ratchet screw-driver because Mr. Neal likes to do his own gun-smithing.

The total cost to him for all their time and labor was exactly zero. On a secondhand, thirty-two-year-old rifle.

Really, sometimes the Grey Lady just makes it all too easy. No, no. Hillary is the Shady Lady; the Grey Lady is The New York Times.

Jameson’s Law of Convincing Argument states that if I wish to convince you of the absolute and infallible correctness of my point of view, I would be well-served not to cite sources that are known for agreeing with me or being on my side of a particular argument.

For example: I recently wrote an article for a magazine about a gun control initiative being launched in the state where that magazine is published. In the article, I quoted President Obama repeating a lie he has told frequently. He stated that, “The law already requires licensed gun dealers to run background checks, and over the past [twenty] years that’s kept millions of the wrong people from getting their hands on a gun. But it’s hard to enforce that law when as many as forty percent of all gun purchases are conducted without a background check.” [Emphasis mine.]

If I had then refuted that lie, which has been repeatedly refuted and debunked, with facts and figures from the NRA, you would have been wise to suspect me of being biased, lazy in my research, and even perhaps dishonest myself. Instead, I quoted the “Fact-Checker” column in the notoriously anti-gun Washington Post, which gave Mr. Obama three Pinocchios out of a possible four for dishonesty.

So, enter the Grey Lady, stage left, ranting wildly about the “myth” of defensive gun use, specifically as it pertains to concealed carry. The Editorial Board of the Times (wisely, no individual wished to attach his or her name to the piece) proceeded to trot out “statistics” purporting to show the relatively few (according to the Times) occasions firearms were used throughout the country for legally justifiable purposes of defense. Then the Grey Lady solemnly informed its readers, most of whom are sheltered and pampered urban and suburban dwellers unlikely to question any dishonest garbage the editorial board dishes as out, that their source for these “statistics” was The Violence Policy Center.

Oh dear, oh dear, Grey Lady, that’s just embarrassing. Anyone with an I.Q. larger than his hat size will hear alarm bells going off. Actually, the editorial board must have realized how embarrassing it was, because a disclaimer was immediately added to the effect that the Violence Policy Center’s figures were, “…necessarily incomplete, because the gun lobby has been so successful in persuading gullible state and national legislators that concealed carry is essential to public safety, thus blocking the extensive data collection that should be mandatory for an obvious and severe public health problem.”

(That, by the way, is an old trick, cynically summed up by the lawyer, Billy Flynn, in the musical Chicago, when he tap dances and sings the song Razzle Dazzle:

“Give ‘em the old flim flam flummox,

Fool and fracture ‘em,

How can they hear the truth above the roar?…

…Long as you keep ‘em way off balance,

How can they spot you’ve got no talents?”

In other words, if your argument is completely bogus, blame it in an outraged tone of voice on your opponent.)

The problem, dear Grey Lady, is that “the extensive data collection that should be mandatory” is in fact carried out and is available to anyone willing to look at an unbiased source. The United States Bureau of Justice, hardly a rabid pro-gun institution, estimates that firearms are used defensively in America 235,700 each year. Other sources, some pro-gun and some neutral, estimate legal defensive firearm use from an approximate low of one million, to a high of two-and-a-half million times a year.

You do see where this is going, right? If the Grey Lady can convince its naïve and uneducated (about guns) readers that the number of legal and justifiable defensive uses of a firearm is a tiny, insignificant amount, then no one can refute the old, emotional “if it saves just one life” gun control argument. Because the reverse of that argument is that if having a gun saves just one life, than there is no reason to ban firearms. And, in fact, as the very low Bureau of Justice figures show, many, many lives are saved by defensive use each year, a great many times more than are taken by criminals.

Then the Grey Lady went on to say, “Clearly, concealed carry does not transform ordinary citizens into superheroes.” That is possibly the only honest thing The Times Editorial Board was able to write in the entire article. Concealed carry does not transform anyone, but it does at least give him a fighting chance not to become another lamentable statistic.

Someone (or possibly several anonymous someones) takes me to task from time to time for my love of firearms and my support of the second amendment. I recently received an email on my “Comments” page that contained (in part) the following: “Have you seen the father of the boy who was killed in the Santa Barbara shooting? Have you seen him on television? How does he make you feel about your gun rights [sic]?”

(I am being persnickety about the “gun rights” correction, but guns are inanimate objects and have no rights. He or she meant second amendment rights.)

Yes, I have seen him, and my heart goes out to him. His pain and grief are unimaginable, and no one in their right mind could fault him for lashing out. I pray God will give him the strength to come through this and to eventually find some peace.

Having said that, I have to point out that his anger is misdirected. The gun didn’t shoot his son anymore the knife killed the three young men who had the misfortune to share an apartment with a monster, anymore than a BMW SUV killed (injured?) the bicyclist who had the misfortune to be on the street that night. Nor were craven politicians responsible, nor was the NRA. Nor were the police who obeyed the law and respected their own oath and the Constitution of the United States by not “doing more” (that seems to be the phrase I hear most frequently on the news) the night they went to the monster’s apartment. Nor were his parents. Nor were the mental health providers he saw. Nor was his Asperger’s Syndrome.

The young man who is responsible for the horror in Santa Barbara was a spoiled, narcissistic, jealous monster. He was evil, and there is no explanation for evil. Evil exists, just as good exists. Fortunately, there is far, far more good in the world than there is evil.

There are approximately ninety million gun owners in the United States, who enjoy sport and recreation with their firearms and never use them to commit any crime. More than that: legally-owned firearms are used defensively (to save lives and prevent crimes) approximately one million times a year in America. Those goods far outweigh the evil that is done.

Many tens of thousands of people (no one knows precisely how many) have Asperger’s and harm no one. Should we judge them all by the actions of an evil monster?

It is normal to cry out in pain, and it is normal to try and assign blame after a horror like this, but the blame lies solely with the monster. As my friend, gun-writer Dave Workman said in an email, “[He] had everything a kid could want, but nothing a young man needed: Character, self-reliance, a sense of responsibility, self-control, a sense of right and wrong.” No new laws, no further restrictions on the rights of gun owners or people with mental problems—or any other citizens—will ever prevent evil. We might just as well try to make ourselves feel good by banning BMW SUVs.

I read somewhere that over 2.2-million people have read the monster’s “manifesto” on line. I will not.

Arguably the most beautiful state in the West, Colorado seems to have veered off onto a course that has more in common with California, New York, Connecticut, and possibly Oz than with any semblance of sanity. Let’s review the bidding:

Just a little over a year ago, Colorado passed four questionably constitutional anti-gun laws, laws that a majority of the state’s county sheriffs publically announced they neither could nor would enforce. The passage of the laws, coupled with an extraordinarily insensitive response to a rape victim by then state Senator Evie Hudak, resulted in a recall election in which two other senators lost their seats and Ms. Hudak resigned. The passage of the laws also prompted one of Colorado’s larger employers, Magpul, a manufacturer of firearms and firearm accessories, to leave Colorado entirely. (They are still technically in Colorado, but are in the throes of moving their manufacturing plant to Wyoming and their corporate headquarters to Texas.)

Just a few months later, the state passed Amendment 64, legalizing the use of marijuana. Regardless of your views on drug usage, marijuana use, possession, sale, distribution, or cultivation is still illegal under federal law. In my state of California, marijuana is cultivated by drug cartel employees in remote places where both hunters and Fish and Wildlife agents have come under fire, making the once bucolic job of Fish and Wildlife one of the most dangerous law enforcement jobs in the state. (Marijuana is also, according to the Sheriff’s Department in my county, considered to be as much of an impediment to driving as either alcohol or cell phone use. It is further considered to be a “gateway” drug, meaning it—pick a word—encourages, inspires, tempts young users to try other more dangerous drugs.)

And now, a U.S. District judge in Colorado, Christine Arguello, has handed down a two-year sentence for a woman who was convicted of buying a gun for a recently paroled felon and known white supremacist who subsequently used that gun to murder two men, to severely wound a Texas Sheriff’s Deputy, and to fire multiple rounds at other police officers during a high-speed chase. Purchasing a firearm for a person who is himself legally unable to buy a gun is a straw purchase. It is a violation of multiple federal and state (specifically Colorado) laws. Since in this particular case, the gun was knowingly bought for a convicted felon, and subsequently used in two murders, it would not be a stretch to charge the woman in question as an accessory to murder. Instead, Ms. Arguello chose to give the woman in question a slap on the wrist.

So what is cumulative message being sent here? We can deduce that Colorado state legislators regard federal laws more as suggestions than as laws and that they, the state legislators, may pick and choose which of those suggestions they wish to enforce. We can deduce that the state legislators also regard the (federally illegal) marijuana business as more desirable than the legal firearms manufacturing business. We can also deduce that Colorado state legislators regard passing laws restricting the freedoms of law-abiding gun owners to be an effective way of discouraging criminals, even as we also deduce that at least one federal judge regards being an accessory to the murder of two men and the wounding of third as a relatively insignificant crime. We can further deduce that if violating existing federal and state gun laws (conducting a straw purchase, for example) is not taken seriously by judges, those laws become as meaningless to criminals as, oh, all other gun laws, or let’s say the federal drug laws the Colorado legislators choose not to enforce.

And finally, we can deduce that perhaps Colorado is no longer the crown jewel of Western states. Unless of course you’re in the marijuana business.

In Good Guns, Stephen Bodio writes, “At its best every good gun is a kind of time machine.” And he might have added that every custom gun maker is a link in a chain of time machines that stretches back to the Clovis spear point or beyond, a line of men obsessed with the pursuit of perfection.

No one becomes an artist – any kind of artist – with a view to getting rich. Painters paint and writers write and gun makers make guns because they can’t help themselves. They may find their avocation early (Mozart was composing at five) or late (Grandma Moses only started painting in her late seventies when her arthritis got so bad she could no longer embroider) but they are driven.

Joe Smithson found his avocation early. He was raised on the Navajo reservation in northern Arizona. His family had a large ranch and his father owned the local trading post.

“I think that’s where my fascination with firearms started, because [his father] was always taking in a lot of guns for pawn.”

After high school, Joe went to Trinidad State Junior College, renowned for the gunsmithing program started in 1947 by P.O. Ackley of Ackley Improved cartridges fame. He was able to study under some of the best gunsmiths in America, and went right from college to an apprenticeship with the legendary Jerry Fisher. Then he opened his own shop in Farmington, NM.

“I started a shop with Jim Mosley (the dean of the gunsmithing department at Trinidad) and we were in business for three or four years before I opened my own place. But then I ended up moving to Provo, UT as a single dad with three kids.”

Joe opened his own shop in Provo, but as he says, “Gunsmithing is a hard way to make a living if you don’t have an outside income. I was lucky enough to have one customer [Mario Zanotti] who kept me afloat ordering guns every year. Without him and the support of Mosley and Fisher, I couldn’t have made it go.”

Fortunately, he did make it go, and today he builds six to eight guns a year, depending on how involved the projects are. Eighty percent of his business is bolt actions, but he can make anything from double rifle or shotgun to lever action or single shot. (The rifle that got him accepted into the American Custom Gunmaker’s Guild was a Fraser falling-block single shot he made himself completely from scratch, action, screws, springs, everything, by hand. It was not, he learned, a productive way to do things.)

The rifle Joe sent me to play with was chambered in .275 Rigby (his favorite caliber for light game is the 7X57mm, the virtually identical precursor and inspiration for the .275), and built with the traditional looks of a British ‘best:’ a breathtaking walnut stock with a crisply defined cheek-piece; ebony fore-end; smooth metal butt plate; square bridge action made by Granite Mountain; flawless – and I really mean flawless – wood-to-metal fit; folding leaf sights; an extra front sight and dust covers for the scope mount slots (!) tucked away in the pistol-grip trapdoor; detachable scope mounts…. Stop right there. Detachable scope mounts unlike any I have ever seen before.

When Joe started using Granite Mountain’s double square bridge action, he wanted a flawless and failsafe detachable mount to go with it, one that would go back to zero every time. He started experimenting with traditional lever systems, but eventually abandoned them in favor of his own unique design.

Each mount has a button on the side. When the button is pressed to remove the scope, an internal ball bearing rises up into a hole in the cam, allowing the mount to slide free from the base. Putting the scope back on, the mounts slide forward into the corresponding grooves in the bases and, when the button is released, the ball bearing drops down into a hole, the button cams over the ball bearing and the whole thing is locked into place. It is simple, easy to use, and absolutely failsafe. If it feels as precise and solid as a Tomahawk cruise missile, it’s because the mechanism is made by the machine shop that manufactures parts for Tomahawk missiles. Of course Joe, being Joe Smithson, then hand polishes and laps the mounts before installing them on bases he makes himself. He has also modified the system to work on other actions or even on double rifles. It’s the relentless pursuit of perfection, and it’s so successful that he makes them for both Westley Richards and Purdey.

I admit to being a sentimental fool – just ask my wife – and I get swept away by romance when I should probably stick to practicality. Certain words and names conjure up irresistible images of adventure and excitement. Winchester, Parker, Holland & Holland, 416 Rigby, 30-30, .375 H&H, .30-06, and of course, .275 Rigby. 275 Rigby? It may be relatively unknown in America, but it is a distinguished and popular round in England. It is the round we associate with tiger hunter Jim Corbett and elephant hunter WMD “Karamojo” Bell, and it doesn’t get more adventurous and exciting than that.

The .275 was originally developed by Mauser in 1892 as a military round, designated the 7X57mm or 7X57 Mauser, or even sometimes the 7X57 Spanish Mauser, since the Spanish army was the first to adopt it. In case you were busy passing notes to the cheerleader seated next to you in history class, I will remind you the 7X57 is the round that caused such enormous losses for Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War. It is also the round that enabled 88,000 Boer guerillas and commandos to fight the might of the British Empire and 500,000 of their soldiers to a humiliating standstill. The British eventually prevailed, but only after instigating a series of scorched-earth tactics whose brutality would today result in Queen Victoria, her Prime Minister Lord Salisbury, and Lord Kitchener all being tried for war crimes in The Hague. (During the last 18 months of the war alone, over 20,000 – some reports put the number at over 26,000 – Boer women and children died in concentration camps.)

John Rigby & Co., originally an Irish firm founded in 1735, moved to London in 1897, and even before the end of the Boer War they already recognized the superiority of both the Mauser bolt action and the 7X57. However, knowing their British market, they offered the gun under the designation .275 Rigby, but by either name the round earned a reputation for accuracy and low recoil. And effectiveness: no less an authority than the late Finn Aagaard, who touted the 7X57 as a superior deer rifle and excellent all-round big game cartridge, reported that he once fired 173-grain solids from a 7X57 at plywood boards and achieved more penetration than he did with a 400-grain from a .416.

Ballistically, it is a little less powerful than the .270 Winchester, but an excellent choice for deer, antelope, wild boar, even much of African plains game. It is not a long-distance cartridge, but at moderate distances (out to 300 yards) it is extraordinarily effective.

The .275 Rigby is virtually identical to the 7X57, with the same case dimensions, the primary difference being that the 7mm is commercially available in more bullet weights than the .275.

The .275 Rigby Joe Smithson sent me was built on a Granite Mountain square bridge action. Granite Mountain Arms is a Phoenix, AZ based company that produces (in their own words) “the highest quality precision Mauser 98 style action ever produced… …the world’s finest double square bridge magnum action…” Based on Joe Smithson’s rifle, I tend to agree with their claims.

The Mauser action makes a great hunting rifle, especially for dangerous game, for the same reason (among others) that it made a great military rifle: that loose, sloppy action is very forgiving. If you fall on your face in the sand with a buttery-smooth action with close tolerances, like some of the old Mannlicher-Schoenauers or Colt-Sauers, you may have to take the gun apart before you can work the action again. I went bottom over teakettle down an embankment with a Colt Sauer many years ago, and it took about five minutes for me to get enough grit and dirt out to be able to extract the bolt. Five minutes in the sunshine on fine, cold day in southern Utah doesn’t seem like much. Five minutes in Alaska in the company of a grizzly who has lost his sense of humor might seem like an eternity. Fall on your face with the Mauser and its loose tolerances allow you to force the action. (The original Mauser 1898 had a bolt handle that jutted out at 90-degrees so that clumsy soldiers could use their boots to kick the action open or shut.)

Granite Mountain actions are CNC machined out of 8620 steel and case hardened. The receiver has an integral ‘C’ ring and a drop-bottom box with a hinged floor plate. The bolt has dual opposed locking lugs and a third safety lug, a recessed bolt face, a modified bolt handle to accommodate scopes, and the traditional three position wing safety. It comes with adjustable sporting trigger, and everything is hand lapped and hand polished. Of course Joe Smithson, being a perfectionist, does his own lapping and polishing on top of that, and the result is an action as slick and smooth as a politician chasing votes, but with Mauser’s loose and forgiving tolerances.

I have been privileged to shoot a good number of custom rifles built on Mauser actions and whatever hand polishing has been done by the maker has been superseded by that looseness. Not so with Joe Smithson’s work. It is still has that Mauser looseness, but it was without a doubt the smoothest Mauser I have ever handled.

I fired four five-shot groups, and with the exception of one stray (doubtless caused by a combination of global warming and the tilting of the earth on its axis) all four groups were under one inch. In one group that rifle put two bullets so perfectly into one hole that it took me a while to realize I hadn’t missed the target altogether. In another group three bullets created a single modified clover leaf under half an inch. Oh, yeah!

Perfection does not come cheap, but whenever a tool transcends mere function to become a work of art, price is no longer the issue. If you can afford to consider buying a custom firearm of this quality, what you are paying for is much more than just a hunting rifle. You are paying for the pursuit of perfection, a pursuit that takes you all the way back to the Clovis spear point.

I received a comment in response to “Thank God Our Elected Officials Are Looking Out for Us!” It came from a man with impeccable credentials in various fields, a man who is nobody’s fool, but he said one thing I take exception to:

“I personally do not find anything aesthetic about [firearms] (though I know others do rever [sic] them as works of art).”

If you’ve ever read this blog, you know I love firearms and make a portion of my living writing about them. I suspect this love of firearms is a result of my father patiently and consistently taking me to the arms and armor galleries of countless museums when I was a child. This almost certainly had less to do with his own interest in firearms (which was less than zero) and more to do with his understanding of how to get a small boy drugged on art and culture in general. My father was an extraordinary man; take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.

In addition to a love of firearms (and knives, swords, armor, the whole nine yards), one of the consequences of this early exposure was a fascination with any tool that is also a functional work of art. A quick list off the top of my head would include firearms, knives, saddles, bits, spurs, certain silver items, equine tools such as headstalls and mecates out of braided rawhide or horsehair (a process called hitching), certain antique cars, and I’m sure there are others that haven’t swum across my ken.

I could make an argument that an AR15 is as aesthetically pleasing as a hammer or wrench or any other tool that is perfectly distilled down to its functional essence to make it as efficient as possible, but let’s go for the more obvious examples.

Consider the lines of a fine side-by-side shotgun, a tool that has also been distilled down over the last one hundred and fifty years to its functional essence. Forget any fancy metal work or wood work; just look at the spare elegance of an Abbiatico & Salvinelli round-action shotgun,

or the classic lines of Lebeau-Courally bolt action rifle Hemingway would have been proud to carry.

Both of these display the same kind of elegant and functional simplicity you might find on a Clovis arrowhead; all three, shotgun, rifle, and arrowhead, are made aesthetically pleasing by being perfectly designed for their purpose, with nothing extraneous or distracting. Still not convinced? Let’s take it a step further and look at some engraving.

Ken Hunt’s magic on a Purdey action.

McKay Brown’s adaptation of the classic Celtic knot.

A Civil War battle scene on a Piotti.

A Westley-Richards sidelock.

A mule deer by Tommy Kaye on a pistol grip cap.

Charles Lee’s engraving on a Dale Tate shotgun.

You may not wish to own such things—or any kind of firearm, for that matter—but no one can deny the artistic merit of these most basic tools.

I received a snarky email from someone in response to the blog where I mentioned I make my living testing firearms. It was not the most articulate email I have ever gotten, but the implication seemed to be either that I liked guns because I am a lonely little man, or that I am a lonely little man because I like guns.

I assume that by “little” he or she means psychologically or intellectually little, since physically I am right in the middle of the pack. (Literally. When I boxed, I boxed as a middleweight.)

Psychologically, I am also pretty much in the middle of the pack. I’ve had my share of troubles (notably PTSD and its handmaiden, Depression) but I don’t hear voices, I’ve never been taken to outer space by little green men, and I don’t believe I’m really Marie Antoinette or a polar bear or anything, so I don’t think I’m in immediate need of a room with soft walls.

A lot of teachers over the years told me I was intellectually negligible (this was usually accompanied by a hearty whack on the side of my head, remedial teaching being a trifle more primitive in those days and those countries) but as I have managed to make my way in the wide world using whatever wits I do have, without ever having to resort to manual labor at minimum wage, here too I would say I’m staggering along in the middle of the pack.

But what really intrigued me about the email was the implication that, if you like firearms, there must, by definition, be something wrong with you. Wow. Those who dance are thought mad by those who don’t hear the music. Putting aside Olympic and other competitive shooters who enjoy using their unique skills to get a projectile from point A to point B (sort of like throwing a football or baseball or basketball), and putting aside the artists who love creating works of functional art using wood and steel as their canvases (sort of like the people who build and restore vintage cars or motorcycles or boats), what reasons might one have for liking guns?

I shan’t enter into any discussion here about need, or personal rights, but why might I like firearms?

For the same reasons Olympic shooters do. I may not have their skills, but just as they enjoy exercising a certain skill set and achieving certain goals, so do I. In my shotgun case I have saved those little patches you get for shooting a straight set of twenty-five. There are embarrassingly few of them, but I’m proud of the ones I do have, and I derived great enjoyment and relaxation from the process of earning them. I have never done any competitive pistol or rifle shooting, but I get great pleasure and relaxation from those activities too. And pride, when I shoot well.

I like fine guns for the same reason that people go to watch regattas or concours d’elegance. I have zero interest in building, restoring, owning, or even driving an antique car, but I can’t look at an immaculate old Duesenberg or a Jaguar Mark IV or practically any pre-war Mercedes or Packard without a gasp of delight. You may be terrified of water, but how can anyone with a soul not be thrilled by the sight of a brigantine under full sail, or a gaff-rigged ketch heeling in the wind? London “best” shotguns, exquisite rifles built by American custom makers on classic and greatly re-worked actions and capable of fantastic degrees of accuracy, those may be things I can never even dream of owning, but I can appreciate the skill, the artistry, the lifetime of commitment that goes into creating such things. It’s like looking at a great handmade watch, something by Patek Philippe, or Breguet or Audemars Piguet; you are looking a piece of exquisite working art that is also capable of performing extraordinarily accurate tasks. And when I am lucky enough to have someone like Joe Smithson, Ryan Breeding, Pat Holehan, Hill Country Rifles, or Kilimanjaro send me one of their works of art to test, I am profoundly grateful.

And if anyone reading this is a financial bracket that allows them to own a Patek Philippe or Breguet or Audemars Piguet, how would you like to adopt a nice middle-aged man?